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A PRESIDENT Online article reporting that the conventional wisdom among parents in their 40s and older — “if you get into both Waseda and Keio, you go to Keio” — is starting to crumble drew a wave of responses on 5ch’s News Express+ board. Some posters said their impression of the two schools shifted around the Keio cheering-squad craze at the Koshien baseball tournament, while others traced the rise and fall of each school’s brand image back to past incidents like the Super Free gang-rape case and a credit card theft scandal. At the same time, plenty of outside observers took a cooler view, with comments like “from a Tokyo University graduate’s perspective, it’s a pot calling the kettle black” — reflecting a broader detachment from the whole debate over which degree ranks higher.
PRESIDENT Online, 10/30, 9:00 AM
“If you get into both Waseda and Keio, you’re supposed to go to Keio.”
Among today’s parent generation — those now in their 40s and older — plenty of people still believe this. Ever since the bubble economy era, Keio University has been treated as a cut above Waseda University, armed with a polished, cosmopolitan image and a strong track record of landing graduates top jobs. The public image has long gone something like this: Waseda is the gritty, old-school school of the masses, while Keio is the university for a chosen elite.
Source: president.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Same here.
I think that was a real turning point.
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And the No. 2 guy in Super Free was from Keio too.
So that's when it was — when Waseda's image took a hit.
Those guys act like they're better than Tokyo University.
Is there really that much of a difference?
I'm a University of Washington grad, just smirking while I read this thread.
After Super Free, Keio was more popular than Waseda.
It only flipped back after a quarter century, but it's splitting hairs either way.
In my day, it was overwhelmingly Keio >>> Waseda.
About the only people who got into both and chose Waseda anyway were literature majors (First Department of Literature).
So hearing that most people now pick Waseda — I can't believe it.
And even pouring in that much energy wouldn't be enough for the kind of kid who ends up at a private humanities school anyway.
In exchange, your face gets uglier.
Tokyo University's science track has really gotten harder, hasn't it~
These days, the only medical schools tougher to get into than Tokyo's Science I are probably Tokyo's Science III, Kyoto University Medicine, Osaka University Medicine, and Science Tokyo (formerly Tokyo Medical and Dental University) Medicine.
There's no way it's actually gotten harder than in the past.
Everyone else's level dropped, so it just looks relatively harder.
No, these days getting into Tokyo's Science III from a public school is basically hopeless.
It's a relative point — Tokyo University has gotten harder than most national medical schools.
Interest in medicine is crashing fast, since urban doctors are already oversaturated.
Also, Tokyo University's science exam questions have gotten way harder over the past few years, nothing like back in the old-timers' day.
Tokyo University is the only school where you need Tokyo-specific prep at an intensity nobody studying for Kyoto University or below needs.
Pick whichever one you think is cooler.
These days, it's Waseda.
Depending on the circumstances, just pick whichever you like.
Between Waseda and Keio, your degree alone isn't going to create a clear-cut difference in life anyway.
The falling birthrate is dragging everyone's level down, and on top of that, all the top students are flocking to the Tokyo area.
Outside the Kanto region, universities are basically a zoo now except for a handful.
Even at the high school level, the sharpest kids are concentrated in Kanto, and former Imperial University-tier schools are filled with Kanto natives.
Watching regional national universities decline like this really feels like a different era.
My alma mater actually beat Waseda in number of applicants.
This private-school strategy is guaranteed to collapse within the next ten years.
Tokyo University students' parents tend to have pretty high incomes.
It'd be more rational to charge full tuition and just give scholarships to students from poorer families.
Though in Japan, you could easily end up with a future where tuition just goes up with nothing else changing.
Wasn't Keio's president the heir to the Itochu family?
Still, there's something to the tuition-hike argument — I think it'd be fine for Tokyo University especially to raise tuition.
Most of its students come from wealthy families who went to private six-year prep schools and cram schools nonstop.
Raise their tuition and use the money to support talented students who are poor.
They need to overhaul the Yochisha entrance exam lol
But even with money, I get the impression truly dumb kids can't actually get in.
I don't think they're letting in the kids of those 'dumb celebrity' TV personalities.
The guy in my department who came up through Yochisha was incredibly sharp, though.
His cultural capital was on a totally different level from regular people — great communication skills including English, and his golf game was practically semi-pro.
Even back in my day, kids aiming for a regional 'ekiben' medical school (slang for the one-per-prefecture local national med schools, likened to station bento boxes) were well below the Tokyo University tier.
And I completely disagree that harder questions mean it's harder to get in.
All that's happened is fewer people gamble on applying and get in — for the kids who were always going to get into Tokyo University anyway, how hard the questions are makes zero difference.
There's no way it's gotten harder when the number of kids has been cut in half by the falling birthrate.
About 20 years ago, the very bottom-tier regional public medical schools were about as hard to get into as Tokyo University's Science I.
Now, the only medical schools harder than Science I are Tokyo's Science III, Kyoto University Medicine, and Science Tokyo Medicine — just those three.
It's not that harder questions make it harder to get in.
It's that there's simply more you have to do for Tokyo University now — talent alone doesn't cut it, which makes it brutal even with fewer kids overall.
It's like soccer in the old days: good footwork alone was enough even if you couldn't run much, and in baseball a talented guy could win titles even after partying all night with a hangover.
Now you can't compete in either sport without discipline and serious physical conditioning.
Meanwhile, you're even seeing guys from independent leagues who study their craft, lift nonstop, and throw 160 km/h hoping to make the majors.
Things used to be soft across the board.
Even for middle-school entrance exams, the math on Showa-era tests from Tsukukoma, Kaisei, Oin, and Nada was way easier than what mid-tier schools give now.
Back then, talent alone got you in.
Actually, there are more public-school kids getting into Science III these days.
Back then there were absurd periods where almost 30 of the 90 seats went to Nada alone.
Now, with the internet and AI, even poor kids can access top-tier study materials for free or cheap.
If your school lets you do your own studying during class, cram school barely matters anymore.
The number of kids switching to correspondence (online) high schools has also shot up — because schools with teachers who give low-level lessons but get furious if you study on your own during class are just in the way.
But in 2026 there are only 2 students from regional public schools?
Even including the greater Tokyo area, it's just 3.
Add in national and public six-year-combined schools, and it only reaches 6.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Backed by strong job-placement results and a cosmopolitan image, Keio has been described as “a cut above Waseda” ever since the bubble economy era. Posters in the thread frequently point to the 2003 scandal involving Waseda’s student group “Super Free” as the turning point that shook that image, with several sharing personal accounts of Waseda’s reputation taking a temporary hit afterward. More recently, with the birthrate falling, top-tier private universities including Waseda and Keio have been raising the proportion of students admitted through recommendation and comprehensive-selection routes, making it harder to compare schools by general-exam difficulty scores alone — a trend also cited as a factor shaking up the brand hierarchy. The thread also showed many posters distancing themselves from the Waseda-versus-Keio debate altogether, with comments like “just pick whichever one you like” standing out, suggesting a broader waning interest in ranking universities by prestige.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Waseda Now the “Common Sense” Choice When Accepted to Both Waseda and Keio… The Rapid Decline of the “Keio Brand” That Parents in Their 40s and Up Never Saw Coming.”
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